You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS
Are the 2018-19 Ottawa Senators a disaster according to their record? No, they sit at 8-8-3, and are 12th in the Eastern Conference and three points out of a playoff spot. That is certainly not good, but they haven't been a rock bottom team so far. So the good news is that they've been a fun and entertaining team that has been able to score a lot of goals.
The bad news is that the offense they have been producing isn't going to last forever.
Why is that? Because they aren't getting enough shots per game, plus their shooting percentage is abnormally high. Through 19 games, their 5v5 shooting percentage ranks fifth at 9.5%, and their overall SH% is fourth at 11.25%. The funny thing is that under a week ago those numbers were tops in the league, but after scoring just three goals in their last two games, they have already fallen a few spots.
Now, if Ottawa was getting a lot of shots per game, a higher shooting percentage wouldn't be as big of an issue because they would still be scoring a decent amount per game. However, they sit 25th in shot attempts per 60 at 53.52, and that number at 5v5 is also 25th at 51.78. A team like Toronto also has a high SH% at 11.35%, but they are fifth in the league in shot attempts per 60 in all situations. If they are getting 35 shots a game and Ottawa is only getting 25, a drop in scoring luck isn't going to be as dramatic for the Maple Leafs.
Individually, there are certainly some Senators that have higher numbers than usual.
Here I have highlighted the players on the team that currently have a higher SH% than their career average (for rookies, I highlighted them if it was above league average):
As you can see, their 13 most efficient shooters are all above their career norms. Now, Mark Stone and Bobby Ryan are barely above it, so it's not as if they are massive outliers. Furthermore, you could say that players such as Tom Pyatt, Magnus Paajarvi, Chris Tierney, and Mikkel Boedker are getting unlucky. And that's a fair argument, although the important thing to note here is that besides Thomas Chabot, all of Ottawa's best players are shooting above their averages.
Sure, 13/25 players is just barely over half, but the players on the bottom half are not nearly as important as the ones on the top. Nor are they getting the same amount of playing time, so 13 is actually a substantial number.
You look at the names amongst those 13 players, and almost all of them are important keys to the Senators offense. Ryan Dzingel, Colin White, Brady Tkachuk, and Zack Smith especially stand out with their SH%'s at at least 16.7%, which is simply not sustainable. We've already seen Max Lajoie's numbers tail off after a fantastic start, and he's still at a 12.5 SH% thanks to his goals early on. You should not expect all of these highlighted players to go on a run of ten games without a goal or anything, but I think by the end of the season collectively their numbers will look worse than they are now.
It would be foolish to think that the offense that we have seen so far is going to continue to produce at that level because it's just not built to last with the way that the Senators are constructed. That's fine though, as long as we program ourselves to expect a dip in production.
To be fair, one could make the argument that the team's SV% is bound to
positively regress while the SH% will go in the opposite direction. Considering the team PDO is right at 100.73 (with 100 being average), it's not as if the Senators have been incredibly lucky in every facet of the game. So who knows, perhaps Craig Anderson can go on a run and cancel out the regression from the offense. At the same time though, I wouldn't put my trust in any of Ottawa's goalies right now, even if you take Anderson's history into consideration.
I'm not willing to proclaim that the goaltending will move closer to average as the season moves along, but I am quite confident that the offense won't quite be
this good. I want to be wrong about that, but we see early season inflated shooting percentages regress all the time, and I don't expect Ottawa to be any different. I hope some of them can keep up their magic, but just don't be disappointed if their offense craters at some point this season.
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»